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MX AJAX Toolbox was designed to allow users to build AJAX functionalities into their websites, while sticking to their typical Dreamweaver workflow.
The easiest way to put together an AJAX site with MX AJAX Toolbox is by applying the New AJAX Site wizard in Dreamweaver.
This wizard will get you started quickly, by generating all the needed files and the corresponding site structure for you. It is ideal for rapid prototyping, if you're on a tight schedule and want to show your clients a mock-up of the final application. Just choose the layout, create the panel states you need and you're done. You can later add more AJAX panels or controls to it.
The building blocks of any website generated with MX AJAX Toolbox are the AJAX panels. These are blocks of content that you can place anywhere in your site and that change independently from the rest of the page. Think of them as the bricks used to build a house. The greatest advantage of AJAX panels is that they can have several states, each being loaded asynchronously only if and when it's needed.
Tip: If you are familiar with AJAX programming patterns, AJAX panels are, in fact, an implementation of the AJAX micro-content pattern.
For instance, in a typical website, you can have one AJAX panel that contains the navigation menu, one AJAX panel for the site header, one for keeping the main contents, and several others for displaying various nuggets of additional information. With MX AJAX Toolbox, you can control what each of these panels contains, when they load and how.
If you're familiar with Dreamweaver templates, you will find it easy and intuitive to work with AJAX panels.
Panels are easy to manage: no coding is required. You can access them using Insert bar commands.
You can also conveniently edit them using right-click commands:
Finally, you can get an overall view of the site structure if you use the Panels floater in Dreamweaver. This shows a tree-like view of your site's master page.
Sometime you need to display bits of content only on certain pages and hide them, otherwise. For instance, you may need to show a "Special offer" box only on your site's shopping pages, or a "Related products" nugget only on the product description page. Likewise, you may need to show the shopping cart on all pages, but hide it on the Checkout page (there's no need to show the shopping carts contents twice, is there?). In MX AJAX Toolbox, you can do this using Layout changes. This revolutionary concept lets you define events, using simple rules such as: when panel A is in state X, change panel B to state Y.
In the next section, you will learn about the suite of interactive controls and widgets provided with MX AJAX Toolbox.